Reports of gang violence have become a prominent focus in the media. The rhetoric used in reporting gang related crime will have an impact on the reader's perception of the seriousness of gang crime. The media coverage can result in outbreaks of ‘moral panic’, where by aspecific group is demonized and held responsible for societal problems. The aim of this thesis is to study representations of gang related crime, and specifically two rival gangs from Rinkeby, Stockholm, “Shottaz” and “Dödspatrullen”, in the two Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet, between the years 2019 and 2022. This is done using critical discourse analysis as method and theory, complemented by the concept of moral panic. The analysis is based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional methodological framework; a sample of newspaper articles dealing with gang crime are analyzed with a focus on the degree of modality, intertextuality and interdiscoursivity. The resultant findings indicate the nature of a dominant discourse and another, less prominent counter discourse. The dominant discourse can be assumed to play a role in triggering moral panic; the findings indicate a link between the story society tells itself about gang crime and a concomitant societal moral panic relating to gang crime. Only one of the newspaper articles analyzed for this study interviews peopleactually affected by gang conflict. This identified counter discourse offers a more nuanced representation of the conflict between “Shottaz” and “Dödspatrullen”, and of the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby. Music also contributes to the alternative counter narrative, telling a story at odds with that which this study indicates to be the dominant societal discourse.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-196032 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Lundberg, Fanny |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Sociologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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